"A veteran music journalist explores how four legendary rock bands--KISS, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, and Starz--laid the foundation for two diametrically opposed subgenres: hair metal in the '80s and grunge in the '90s"--

"The definitive, no-holds-barred oral history of 1980s hard rock and hair metal. 1980s hard rock was a hedonistic and often intensely creative wellspring of escapism that perfectly encapsulated-and maybe even helped to define-a spectacularly over-the-topdecade. Indeed, fist-pumping hits like Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It," Mötley Crüe's "Girls, Girls, Girls," and Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" are as inextricably linked to the...

"From disaffected Catholic schoolgirl and 1970s music fanatic to instigator on the 1980s hardcore punk scene, Nancy Barile pursued freedom at a time when punk music was new and dangerous. While booking some of Philadelphia's earliest DIY shows featuring Minor Threat and SSD, and managing raw local acts, Nancy was at the fierce center of the action as insurgents such as the Dead Kennedys and Black Flag rewrote history. She survived punk riots and urban...